Maxwell Institute Podcast

God delivers us. That’s one of the central takeaways of Exodus’s story. But what do we do to ensure that we remember that takeaway? In this episode of Abide: A Maxwell Institute Podcast, we discuss what it means to hold on in the face of adversity, to remember the actions that ensure our temporal and spiritual salvation, and much more. The post Abide: Exodus 7-13 appeared first on Neal A. Maxwell...

Exodus: a movement of the people. As we move into the second book of the Tanak, or Old Testament, we have more than a movement of people. We have a flurry of new people, ideas, and we see Jehovah’s miraculous work through ancient Israelite eyes. But how can we be moved? How can we learn to see God’s orchestrations and work to become a part of them? We discuss that and much more in today’s episode...

Throughout the Old Testament we learn much about the relationships of tribes, clans, and family groups. We began discussing Israel’s family in the last episode, focusing on Joseph, the favored son sold into Egypt whose meteoric rise in Egyptian politics through the spiritual gift of interpreting dreams ultimately provided a land inheritance that would keep the family together. What can we learn in...

The version of Joseph in Egypt I got growing up was shaped heavily by Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. Despite the delightful music and vivid color, there’s far more to the Joseph narrative than even Donny Osmond can share in 90 minutes. In today’s episode of Abide: A Maxwell Institute Podcast, we explore several key themes in the story of Joseph in Egypt. The post Genesis 37-41 appea...

Volume 5 of the Revelations and Translations series from the Joseph Smith Papers Project presents all extant fragments of the original manuscript of the Book of Mormon. For the first time ever, researchers have access to a photograph and color-coded transcripts of each fragment of the manuscript, showing every change made and which scribe made it. The post Maxwell Institute Podcast #139: The Origi...

Readers of the Tanak or Old Testament see that The Lord marks Israel as a chosen people. Modern Latter-day Saints identify with being a “peculiar people.”  But what does it mean to be a chosen people? And how does one’s peculiarity mark boundaries of values, identity, and peoplehood? Chosenness does not mean a life without disappointment or despair, but it does bring comfort in recognizing the div...

As Genesis marches on we are introduced to new people, whose lives are in some ways different than our own, but in many ways are similar. In this episode of “Abide: A Maxwell Institute Podcast,” we meet Isaac and Rebekah, who push us to think about what our responsibilities are in our families, and how we can understand people and their faith in all their complexity. My name is Joseph Stuart, I’m...

Today, Dr. Elisa Eastwood Pulido joins us to discuss her book, The Spiritual Evolution of Margarito Bautista: Mexican Mormon Evangelizer, Polygamist Dissident, and Utopian Founder, 1878-1961 (Oxford University Press, 2020). Dr. Pulido’s book is the first full-length biography of Margarito Bautista (1878-1961), a celebrated Latino Mormon leader in the U.S. and Mexico in the early twentieth century...

The Lectures on Faith teaches that, “…a religion that does not require the sacrifice of all things never has the power sufficient to produce the faith necessary unto life and salvation.” But how much can we be asked to sacrifice? For Abraham, he seemed to have been asked to sacrifice in a myriad of ways. First, he placed his faith on the altar by waiting for a child with his wife, Sarah. Second, a...

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Have you ever had anyone ask you “what is scripture?” For such a short question it has the possibility to open up into thousands of answers. For Latter-day Saints, it can be defined as “whatsoever [God’s representatives] shall speak when moved upon by the Holy Ghost.” This definition is somewhat broader than many other Christian definitions of scripture, incorporating both written and spoken modes...

Introduction: The world of the Old Testament, like our own day, is swimming in violence. From the direct and intimate violence of person-to-person interaction to the structural violence that reinforce hunger, war, and inequality, each of us is affected by others’ use of force. Despite this reality, or perhaps because of it, the Lord commanded us to “proclaim peace” to the world and to follow the P...

Moses 7 features Enoch, a figure that receives scant attention in Genesis, but has an overwhelming impact on the Pearl of Great Price. Importantly, Enoch’s experience with God also shapes how we view the Father, His relationship to us, and recognize his character and disposition. In today’s episode of Abide, we discuss Moses 7 and how it contributes to Latter-day Saint ideas.  My name is Joseph St...

The post Maxwell Institute Podcast #136: Documenting a Relationship: Early Latter-day Saints and the Book of Mormon, with Janiece Johnson appeared first on Neal A. Maxwell Institute | BYU .

A lot of time passes in Genesis 5. We see fathers and sons’ names and their ages when sons were sired. They lived a lot longer than we do now! In Moses 5 we receive far more detail about post-Eden life but without the connections to genealogy beyond Adam, Abel, Cain, and Lamech.  What are we to understand from these genealogies? What happens when we zoom way out, like in Genesis 5, or we zoom in a...

Please enjoy Dr. Jennifer Reeder’s 2021 Neal A. Maxwell Lecture! You can watch the address, with Dr. Reeder’s slides, at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qo7GR8ql_xY. The post Maxwell Institute Podcast #135: The Stuff of Discipleship, with Jennifer Reeder appeared first on Neal A. Maxwell Institute | BYU .

“Adam fell that men might be. And men are that they might have joy.” Lehi’s declaration in 2 Nephi 2 is transformative in Latter-day Saint theology, transforming an event portrayed often in negative terms throughout Abrahamic faiths into something fulfilling and meaningful.  That isn’t the only way that Latter-day Saints understand the Fall differently than Jews, Christians, and Muslims. In today’...

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In October 1995 at the General Relief Society meeting of LDS General Conference, then President Gordon B. Hinckley presented “The Family: A Proclamation to the World.” It was the 5th of 6 proclamations–we now have 7. the most recent being the Proclamation on the Restoration in 2020. Church communications come in a variety of modes. Official Declarations as we talked about on out last podcast, are...

Spencer W. Kimball, his counselors, and their fellow apostles prayed about the revelation that Latter-day Saints have canonized as Official Declaration 2 in June 1978. They immediately let it be known that the Lord had told them that all worthy people, of any race, color, creed, or nationality, would be eligible for temple blessings and that men could be ordained. This lifted a racial restriction...

In September 1890, Wilford Woodruff, President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, met with his counselors with a vexing problem. How could they, as prophets and the First Presidency of the Church, prevent their religion from being squashed by the federal government over the practice of plural marriage? They ultimately decided that the Lord had confirmed to them that “the time [had...

Though raised as a Latter-day Saint in Utah, Samuel M. Brown was an atheist from an early age and proud of it. Yet, by his own account, God became an undeniable presence in his life. Now a faithful Latter-day Saint, this practicing research physician narrates some of the waypoints on his journey into believing and belonging. Some are dramatic–his wife’s cancer diagnosis or working in a hospital du...

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